Sorry for the general quietness. As those of you who know me will know, I have a lot of ongoing health issues (hence going gluten free and dairy free).
In addition, a while ago my grandmother had a nasty fall. She has weak bones, and our doctor mentioned to my mum or my sister about getting them scanned. Which was all my sister needed, because she has been desperate to buy one of those scannng scales for ages. So she bought one.
She has weak bones. My mum has weak bones.
Mine are worse. Much, much worse. As in, they weigh a third of what they should do.
Obviously this isn't good, and I need to work on building up my bone mass. I already do a fair bit of weight bearing exercise (I run regularly, have a personal trainer who makes me lift weights, as well as other exercise), so I know that a big proportion of what I need to do will be diet related.
I've started liquid calcium supplements (liquid calcium is supposedly absorbed better), but I decided that I needed to get rid of my habits that were potential sources of leeching calcium from my bones. I.e, I needed to quit sugar (sugar sugar, not honey, fruit or maple syrup, to be clear) and caffeine. And being crazy, I thought I'd do them at the same time.
The caffeine was easy actually. I don't drink coffee, just tea, so I switched my black teas for green teas and my green teas for herbal ones. I had a few days of being tired and grumpy, but when they were over, it was all good.
Sugar, on the other hand... there's a reason there's a lot of "quit sugar" programs out there. It's because sugar is crack. So there are a whole lot of cravings, feeling like crap, nausea, and other things that go on.
Which would be bad enough. I mean, lots of people fall off the bandwagon and get themselves some delicious red lollies. I could cope with that. But I also have a minor metabolism problem, meaning I go through energy much faster than the average person. I require a lot of food, and I require a substantial proportion to be food that I can extract energy from quickly and with little effort. Otherwise, I shake, vomit, and or faint. It has nothing to do with insulin, so its not diabetes, I just burn energy faster than everyone I've ever met (excepting the few others in my extended family with the same issue).
So sugar isn't just a drug for me. It's the drug that quite literally keeps me on my feet. I can't just cut it out and expect to be oh-so-awesome. I can cut it out and expect to be in hospital in a week. I needed to replace it with something.
My replacement of choice was juice, a combination of fruit and vegetable juices. I got out my old juicer, and started juicing away. Carrots, oranges, apples, celery, tuscan cabbage, lemon, lime, grapefruit, kale, lettuce, cucumber... if it was around I would juice it.
Which led to me detoxing majorly. You would think that given that I've never used illegal drugs, never smoked, rarely drink, rarely eat meat, don't eat dairy or gluten, and minimise my use of medications, that I wouldn't have that many toxins in my body. You would be wrong.
I looked like a train wreck. I felt only slightly better. My skin came out in pimples everywhere, and the bags under my eyes wouldn't have been allowed as handluggage on a domestic flight.
It took a few days for me to realise what was happening, and then I went into action on finding ways to remove some of the toxins more quickly. I settled on Bikram yoga (which I never thought I'd do, yoga is an alternative form of spirituality, but Bikram not only releases tons of toxins, it gets regularly criticised by yogis as not being 'real' yoga because it doesn't incorporate eastern spirituality in it. Score!), and it helped.
And then I went to Perth. I didn't fall off the wagon much, as Paul had arranged pretty much everything so that I would have as few issues with diet as possible (he's so great!). I only had a few treats here and there - substantially less than the amount of sugar I normally would have.
But then I got back to Melbourne. I had no groceries. I had changed my work hours so I was working 4 days rather than 5, but longer hours on each of those days. (And my day off was spent beautifully in Perth!). I had no energy and no time.
I ate sugar. Lots and lots of sugar!
I'm still off the caffeine, but back on the sugar. I'm planning to come off again (and soon), but I'm going to come back off soon (next week is the plan, atm). In the mean time, I'm doing a few things to make it easier for me when I do come off sugar again:
- I'm getting a better juicer
- I'm working on detoxing now
- I'm cutting back on sugar a bit
- I'm keeping off the caffeine
- I'm planning and prepping all my meals (for work especially) in advance
Hopefully this time it sticks, and I'll be sugar free with super strong bones in no time.
(PS, I still have a few sugary recipes to post, and I'll bake things for others using sugar. So you sugar fiends will still have something to glean from the blog!)
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